OU-Texas: A primer

photo via i.usatoday.net

Bumped from FanPosts

Ah, the sweet aroma of 40,000 crying Longhorn fans! Is there anything better?  It's a proven fact that the birthrate in Oklahoma jumps every time the Sooners win this game and that the suicide rate in Austin increases (but not enough!).

The OU-Texas game has been played since 1900.  Texas, a national power at the time, was always on the lookout for nonconference "cupcakes" (a fine tradition the Longhorns maintain to this day), and OU, a young program trying to rise to the next level, fit the bill nicely.  It helps to think of OU, at the time, as a "TU" type school...a respectable program, but merely a decent midmajor.  The Longhorns helped themselves to an 8-1-1 series edge over OU until Oklahoma laid down the law with a 50-0 shellacking in 1908. Think of it as the equivalent of Tulsa beating Texas  50-0. The shame! The indignity! The awesomeness!

The Longhorns, realizing that this was just the first of many a coming beatdown, decided they'd try to cement into place a longtime advantage: playing in Texas every year.  Granted, Dallas is almost exactly halfway between Austin and Norman. It's also the exact location of the Texas State Fair...home of corn dogs, chili, and 300 pound Texas women with 3 teeth. One has to wonder at the impact of all that "Texiness" on our players who made their escape from the sewer south of the border, but it's definitely not good. Rumor mill has it that merely sniffing the Texas State Fair from the highway, and not even stopping, is enough to lower one's IQ by 8 points. Texas born Sooners, having helped themselves to considerably higher IQs by breathing non-livestock fumed oxygen and eating non-lead based foods, can find themselves regressing to their subhuman Texas prototypes if they aren't careful. It's not a pretty picture. Think of it as a "Hulk" type change. Once I saw Rhett Bomar sprout a substantial brow ridge, his eyebrows growing 1/2" in less than 5 seconds (and indeed joining into one unibrow), and losing the ability to converse beyond simple grunts. All because he ate a corn dog. It was a sickening spectacle.  On the other hand, such transformations can be useful to defensive linemen!

Another impact of moving the game was the fact that all OU-Texas games would be refereed by Southwest Conference Officials. I'm not going to say the reffing was biased...any non-dullard knows the OU-Texas games set a standard of crooked refereeing that the Oregon Ducks can only aspire to. Granted, the Ducks outdid themselves 3 times within the space of only one minute, but the Longhorns consistently cheated OU until the Big 12 was formed (over 90 years). Despite the hometown refereeing, which was duly noted far and wide by all sportswriters with a pulse, Texas STILL managed to lose a lot of games to the Sooners. In the infamous 1984 cheating episode Texas "tied" OU 15-15. Strangely, the next week Texas plummeted in the polls while OU rose a few spots...exactly what would have happened if OU had won the game. Yes, the sportswriters noticed and punished the undeserving Longhorns. Probably a good dozen of Texas "wins" came courtesy of the referees.

Along with the referee shenanigans and the home state advantage for Texas every year there are also a lot of other distractions at the state fair. Violence, for one, is extremely popular. It's also something that drunken loudmouth Texas fans aren't very good at, consistently getting beaten by OU fans in the stands, at the fair, and in the bars. Once a couple years back in an Oklahoma bar an overzealous Sooner "sterilized" a Longhorn fan. That is amazing on many levels. For starters, the Longhorn fan actually had TESTICLES!! Can you believe that? It defies all logic. I guess it stands to reason that he must've had balls to be talking Longhorn crap in an Oklahoma bar in the first place, so the OU fan kindly castrated him so he'd match the Longhorn mascot. But I digress...the fact is that Texas just isn't very good at fighting. Their claim to fame down there is a massacre IN WHICH THEY LOST TO MEXICO. Think about that for a minute...their BRAGGING POINT is they were beaten by a bunch of penniless disorganized Mexicans. Probably Mexicans wielding bags of oranges in each hand. Of course, Texas eventually won the war (of which they seem, strangely, less proud) with heavy assistance from the USA.  But I digress, again.

The fact is I love how OU fearlessly treads into the hellhole known as Texas every year, and says "bring it, wimps!".  I love the yearly reaping of Longhorn tears, dreams, and hopes. Every time OU pummels Texas an angel gets his wings.